It is reprehensible. San Francisco cops have nothing better to do than harass and traumatize scores of young people engaged in skateboarding.
The bullying fascist tactics displayed by the San Francisco Police Department are actions people have come to expect in Putin’s Russiaas he cracks down on anti-war protestors.
Local cops from the City’s Mission District station harassed, bullied, handcuffed and loaded into police vans scores of young skateboarders.
These young adults have been unnecessarily traumatized by the agents of the State. Who knows what impact this fascist type treatment will have on their psyches as they mature into adulthood and form opinions about Authority.
Excerpted from Mission Local 7.8.2023
San Francisco police officers in riot helmets rushed into and blockaded intersections this evening near Dolores Park to shut down the annual “hill bomb” where hundreds of people gather to watch skaters and bikers zoom down Dolores Street.
Mission District Hill Bomb absent the bullying San Francisco Police Department – 2020
The hill bomb is an annual event that sees skaters from across the Bay Area come into the Mission to skate down Dolores Street.
As of 8:45 p.m., SFPD had kenneled dozens of skaters and young people, keeping them trapped between two rows of police officers armed with batons and riot helmets.
“Those are just kids!” standers-by shouted.
“We don’t have rights!” said someone else.
SFPD bullying terror tactics. Surrounding scores of young people prior to arrest. What’s their alleged offense? Skateboarding.
A sergeant on the scene said they will arrest between 50 to 60 of the skaters and viewers.
Sabir, a 14-year old who was in the group before it was corralled, said the police trapped the group between Dolores and Guerrero streets.
They were “trying to trap us, I ran away, and someone tried to hit me,” he said. “He swung [the baton] at me and said ‘Move!’ and now all of them are under arrest.”
Sabir said the majority of the group are teenagers.
“In a statement, Jenkins also blamed defense attorneys for her office not having more to show for her prosecutions against drug dealers.”
– San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins quoted in San Francisco Standard 7.6.2023
Does it fight crime to arrest the user?
Carefully reading The Standard it’s evident the State of Crime has not changed appreciably since Brooke Jenkins was anointed DA a year ago today.
It’s no surprise that the San Francisco Police Department and their cheerleader DA are unhappy with The San Francisco Standard for calling out their ineptitude.
It is demonstrably pathetic that Brooke Jenkins lashes out at defense attorneys, most of whom are public defenders, for doing their job. Represent their clients.
Brooke Jenkins continues to blame “progressive ideology” embedded in her own office rather than take responsibility for her abject failure.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – JANUARY 26, 2022: At the intersection of Leavenworth and Golden Gate Streets people all walk to work and hang out in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, California. (Photo Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Now that Chesa Boudin has been gone a year, Brooke Jenkins no longer has her scapegoat to blame. The target of her incompetence are defense attorneys Brooke Jenkins must battle in the court of law. Where bloviating rhetoric is not the coin of the realm.
The streets of San Francisco
And the cops. What can I say?The SFPD is still in full Chesa scapegoat mode and refuses to acknowledge their role in the ouster of Chesa Boudin. Having spent over 700K to try and defeat Chesa in 2019, the cops went full throttle to bring him down through proactive sloth and incompetence on the job.
It was common knowledge on the street that the SFPD, egged on by its reactionary Police Officers Association, engaged in the most obvious dereliction of duty. They refused to make arrests because Chesa Boudin was their sworn foe. The job objective was to take him down by ignoring criminal acts. They succeeded.
Even law and order loving Chronicle columnist Heather Knight. Who contributed regularly in her columns to Chesa’s ouster. Felt compelled in a brief moment of journalistic integrity to call out the cops for their dereliction and incompetencewhile Chesa was DA.
People on the Street. Often the target of The failed War on Drugs
Excerpted from The San Francisco Standard 7.6.2023
DA Brooke Jenkins quickly adopted a more punitive approach to crime than her progressive predecessor both in tone and substance, homing in on repeat narcotics offenders and drug dealers, whom she targeted with more stringent policies and harsher rhetoric.
She threatened to charge dealers with murder if their drugs lead to overdoses, said she’d add years to sentences for those who deal near schools and revoked what she termed “lenient” plea offers made by Boudin.
SFPD war on crime
But there is little evidence on the streets that these tactics are working, and many say they are merely a return to a failed “war on drugs.” Instead of focusing on diversion and treatment, which were part of Boudin’s approach, Jenkins has put more of her tools toward jailing drug dealers and punishing users.
Jenkins blamed defense attorneys for her office not having more to show for her prosecutions against drug dealers.
Jenkins said her approach to running the District Attorney’s Office will simply take more time to bear fruit.
What are the cops searching for? Is this a pretextual stop?
Reports of drug offenses have increased 41% since she took office.
Overdose deaths driven by the fentanyl epidemic are on pace to hit a record high, having hit 268 as of the end of April. Things have become so dire that Gov. Gavin Newsom sent in state law enforcement to help patrol the epicenter of the drug crisis in the Tenderloin as numerous local operations have sprouted to tackle the issue.
While data provided by the DA’s Office shows that Jenkins is beginning to differentiate herself from Boudin—she is charging more drug cases and sending far fewer people to diversion programs, which offer alternatives to conviction—her increased caseload has yet to lead to a sizable change in drug convictions.
In fact, in her first 11 months in office, she convicted fewer drug dealers than Boudin over the last 11 months of his time as district attorney.
SFPD faces down The People on the Street
Cases can take years to yield convictions, and righting an office that was driven more by a progressive ideology than the law cannot happen overnight, she said in emailed statements.
Lee Heidhues with editorial assistance from Liz Heidhues 7.8.2022
Mayor London Breed, who was behind-the-scenes leader in the political Coup d’etat, has rewarded Brooke Jenkins by anointing her the chief Law Enforcement official in San Francisco.
July 8, 2022 will go down as one of the most abhorrent and desultory days in San Francisco’s political history.
It is a vile and disgusting travesty seeing City Hall hacks and hangers-on cheer on a Puppet District Attorney who was a shameless agent in the ousting of Progressive DA Chesa Boudin.
Mayor London Breed with Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins during her swearing in Ceremony – Looking over Breed’s shoulder is Man Kit Lam, vicious opponent of DA Chesa Boudin 7.8.2022
The swearing-in of Puppet District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, a leader in the political coup d’etat ousting Progressive DA Chesa Boudin, ranks right up with the worst travesties in the City’s history.
It is beyond depressing and mind numbing that President Biden has authorized the use of American cluster bombs in Ukraine.
This evil weapon of war is banned by 120 nations. The impact of cluster bombs is devastating and long lasting. Years after the conflict ends citizens in the war torn nation will be maimed and killed by unexploded cluster bombs.
Equally distressing is the fact that so many American politicians are rallying around President Biden and applauding this appalling decision.America is a warlike militaristic nation whose primary way to resolve conflict is through the use of force.
A photograph taken on July 3, 2022 shows an tail section of a 300mm rocket which appear to contained cluster bombs launched from a BM-30 Smerch multiple rocket launcher embedded in the ground after shelling in Kramatorsk, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Genya SAVILOV / AFP) /
Excerpted from The Intercept 7.7.2023
Cluster munitions are controversial due to the manner in which “bomblets” are scattered around a targeted area, creating secondary explosions that can cause death and injury even long after a conflict has ceased.
President Biden’s decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine would likely be seen as a setback to nonproliferation efforts aimed at stopping use of the weapon.
The bombs are currently at the center of an international campaign to ban their use in armed conflict. More than 100 states have signed an international convention on cluster munitions vowing not to employ them in war, produce them domestically, or encourage their use in foreign conflicts.
A Ukrainian citizen walks cautiously past the remnants of a cluster bomb
The use of cluster attacks during the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon killed and wounded hundreds of civilians. A decade later, swaths of southern Lebanon are still dangerous for civilians who are periodically killed or maimed by stray bomblets.
The Russian military has also extensively used cluster munitions during its invasion of Ukraine, including in attacks on populated areas that were said to have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians in the early months of the war.
July 22 last year, a Ukrainian woman living in the town of Izium, then occupied by invading Russian troops, was killed in shelling launched by the Ukrainian military. The bomb that killed her was no ordinary weapon.
According to investigators from Human Rights Watch, who visited the scene of the attack in Izium the woman’s death was caused by a cluster munition, a weapon much of the world has moved to ban due to the indiscriminate harm that they cause to civilians.
The salvo was allegedly fired from the Ukrainian side, according to witnesses, and detonated near the woman’s home, killing her and her dog.
“The attack was very scary. Very loud. I was outside and there were a lot of explosions. The wife of my ex-husband came and told me to hurry to get inside,” one witness told Human Rights Watch, according to a report released late Wednesday night. Another witness, who viewed the victim’s body in the aftermath and helped bury her in a local cemetery, said that her “face and body were severely mutilated by the explosion.”
Cluster bomb embedded in the Ukrainian earth in winter
The use of cluster attacks during the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon killed and wounded hundreds of civilians. A decade later, swaths of southern Lebanon are still dangerous for civilians who are periodically killed or maimed by stray bomblets.
The bombs are currently at the center of an international campaign to ban their use in armed conflict. More than 100 states have signed an international convention on cluster munitions vowing not to employ them in war, produce them domestically, or encourage their use in foreign conflicts.
The Russian military has also extensively used cluster munitions during its invasion of Ukraine, including in attacks on populated areas that were said to have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians in the early months of the war.
“The previous administration’s poor management and ideologies caused immeasurable harm to the public,” she wrote. “This office saw an exodus of experienced and talented attorneys after years of prosecutorial negligence.” –Written statement to SF Gate after one year as SF DA.
Brooke Jenkins will not let herself be interviewed. A tough reporter would question her seriously and, perhaps, unearth some unpleasant truths about this grifter politician on the make.
Jenkins can’t let it go. She needs her scapegoat to validate her precarious perch as The City’s anointed chief law enforcement officer.
Jenkins scapegoating statement says it all about the treacherous political creature who clawed her way into office by destroying a decent honest Progressive District Attorney, Chesa Boudin. Calling herself a “volunteer” only to disclose after she was safely ensconced in office by the equally treacherous Mayor London Breed. Brooke Jenkins disclosed she was paid over 150K for her treachery in the political coup d’etat of June 7, 2022.
This woman has no shame. She refuses to take responsibility for the State of Crime in San Francisco. Continuing to cast aspersions on the Man who promoted her career. Only to turn on him in an act of evil political opportunism.
Brooke Jenkins will pay the political price as crime in San Francisco spirals with no end in sight.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins at an event in San Francisco on Tuesday, August 19, 2022. | Camille Cohen/The Standard
Excerpted from SF Gate 7.6.2023
Taken altogether, how can Brooke Jenkins’ first year in office best be described?
In a statement to SFGATE on Thursday — two days ahead of her first full year in office — Jenkins said, “I believe we have and are making progress every day to improve conditions on our streets. It was years of prosecutorial neglect that contributed to the conditions in our neighborhoods, but we have set a new direction and tone in San Francisco that brazen drug dealing will be prosecuted.”
Evaluating whether street conditions are improving is largely subjective; noted Boudin detractors believe things are getting better, while others who’ve long documented their public safety observations seem to disagree.
DA Brooke Jenkins. Opportunistic political operative parrots the law and order line
Data shows fatal overdoses are rising, and Jenkins’ office is currently struggling to obtain convictions for drug crimes. It also shows violent crime is up under Jenkins, while property crime is down, as first reported by Mission Local. But those data points have caveats, too: The COVID-19 pandemic brought life to a halt in 2020, leading to a decrease in criminal reports that year and in the first half of 2021.
If crime rates are directly linked to DA policy, as Jenkins suggested when she was campaigning against Boudin, then she failed to deliver on her promises in year one. But after taking office, she offered a different benchmark for success.
We are going back to Berlin for the first time in five years later this year.
A good way to get the feel for how the spoken German sounds and explore what attracts the German viewer is to stream.
Two series.
One about the underside of the German banking system. Bad Banks.
Another about German law enforcement and its intersection in politics and the migrant community. Sleeping Dog.
Watching these German dramas is also a nice way to escape the hum drum offered by the American entertainment industry.
Viewing the photography of Berlin and Frankfurt (in Bad Banks) shows me places we saw on previous visits and puts on display sites we may want to visit later this year.
Bad Banks
Bad Banks Trailer
Excerpted from Goethe Institut USA
MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND… AND DOWN THE TUBES.
The opening of Bad Banks comes on like a disaster movie, only the calamity here is financial: as a TV news broadcast warns of a banking collapse that’s “five times worse than the fall of Lehman Brothers,” an angry crowd swarming around an ATM discovers there’s no cash left and starts rioting in the streets of Frankfurt’s financial district, the Wall Street of Germany. Anyone in a suit and tie is assumed to be a banker and a fair target for the enraged mob. Even with tear gas and barricades, the police can’t contain the uprising.
Tobias Langhoff, left, and Barry Atsma, center. Two of the central characters in Bad Banks. Sadly, Tobias Langhoff died November 28, 2022 at the age of 60. He was born on the same day in 1962.
A lone figure in a hoodie skirts the violence to slip into a side entrance of an office high-rise. This is young investment banker Jana (Paula Beer), and as she navigates the debris-strewn hallways of her firm, a shell-shocked colleague blames her for causing the disaster.
The show then backtracks eight weeks to the day Jana is fired from her gig at a prestigious Luxembourger firm, apparently for upstaging a grossly sexist executive. In a milieu where getting fired is akin to death, she’s humiliated, devastated. But then comes a surprise offer to work at a powerhouse investment bank in Frankfurt, the rival to her previous employer. The near-apocalyptic opening teaser thus sets up an intriguing mystery: how could quietly competent Jana be the one to cause so much havoc? Millions of viewers have succumbed to this irresistible narrative hook and binge-watched the first season of Bad Banks.
Christelle Leblanc (Désirée Nosbusch) portrays the aggressive and calculating Chief of Investment at Deutsche German Investment in Bad Banks
SLEEPING DOG is a new Netflix series in the crime and thriller genres. It’s from Germany (org. title: Schlafende Hunde) but the series is actually based on the 2016 series The Exchange Principle from Israel. In fact, this is a remake with just a few changes.
Carlo Ljubek and Antonio Wannek survey a crime scene in Sleeping Dog
There are six hour-long episodes in the series and there’s a huge mystery looming over everyone and everything from the very beginning. It’s very much a character-driven story and it works very well. Nobody seems to be entirely good or bad, which results in many gray areas!
Next door to California is Nevada. The state known for gambling, legalized prostitution and the place to which the Oakland Raiders and, soon, the Oakland A’s will have moved to find greener financial pastures. Translation: Money.
Now, Nevada is becoming rapidly known for something else. A radical right MAGA governor who is putting the torch to any remotely progressive legislation passed by the legislature.
Abortion, voting rights, rent control. It’s all fair game for the radical right Governor of Nevada.
Excerpted from The Nation 6.30.2023
It’s hard to think of a governor who has used his veto power so often and to such destructive effect. Nevada’s legislature is, in many ways, as progressive as those in California, Oregon, and Washington.
Clark County Sheriff turned MAGA radical Governor Joe Lombardo
Yet its efforts to reimagine Nevada’s political priorities are being stymied time after time after time by rookie GOP Governor Joe Lombardo’s uncompromising conservatism and his willingness to use the powers of his office to block popular measures aimed at protecting the rights, and increasing the economic and health care security, of ordinary Nevadans.
Lombardo, the one time sheriff of Clark County, is way out of step with Nevada’s voting public on many public policy matters which he’s used his red pen.
Roughly 70 percent support broad access to abortion, and, presumably, at least that proportion support guaranteeing the right of access to contraception.
More than four in five voters tell pollsters they support medically assisted dying options.
When the legislative session ended earlier this month, Lombardo ended up with 75 vetoes in a single session, including 43 on the final day that he could issue vetoes. It was the most annual vetoes that any Nevada governor has ever issued.
Of all the vetoes, however, arguably the most bizarre was that of Assembly Bill 383, codifying the right to contraception in the state. It was, advocates urged, a necessary measure in a post-Dobbs legal landscape in which once-established rights are suddenly seen as vulnerable. The bill passed with bipartisan support, including from Heidi Gansert, the leader of the Republican minority in the state Senate, as well as her deputy, Carrie Buck. More than 7,000 Nevada women wrote letters to the governor in support of the legislation. Lombardo argued that it was unnecessary and vetoed the bill.
I watched fascinated, appalled and, ultimately, participated in the San Francisco Police Department public review of the fatal shooting in the outer Richmond District the morning of June 22.
Listening to most of the public comments repulsed me. Most callers spent their two minutes praising the SFPD. Insisted the officer behaved correctly. Decried the state of crime in San Francisco. Criticized the district Supervisor.
After I made my comments which were that the officer acted “precipitously” I was called a “Monday morning quarterback” and told by another caller I “should leave” San Francisco.
An SFPD officer shot and killed 37 year old Marc Child who had just murdered his 76 year old mother and a family dog.
The issue for me in watching the disturbing body cam footage was whether or not it was necessary to resort to fatal action within two minutes of arriving at the crime scene.
Equally disturbing was the behavior of the officer prior to the shooting. He yelled and screamed at an obviously mentally distraught man. His action did nothing to defuse a horrific situation.
The trained officer’s ultimate action, within two minutes of arriving at the crime scene, is questionable at best.
Dead men don’t talk. We will never know what was going on in the mind of Marc Child as he took his final breaths in the doorway of his home.
Moment the SFPD fatally shot Marc Child – 6.22.2023
The SFPD officer was a distance away from Marc Child who had a 3 1/2″ knife in his hand.
3 1/2″ bloody knife in the hand of Marc Child at the time of his death.Marc Child moments after being shot by SFPDSFPD approach mortally wounded Marc Child
It is obvious that SFPD shot Marc Child from a distance since the shell casings were found on the curbside a distance from the front door of the house.
Still photo of shell casings in curbside at 717 31st Avenue – KTVU Fox News
Another incipient environmental disaster in the making is barely causing a ripple in the mainstream media.
Who would have thought that Norway, ancestral home of composer Edvard Grieg and locale of the classic Beatles song “Norwegian Wood,” would be conducting deep sea mining. And, for what?
Dig up the components for electric car batteries among other environmentally destructive uses.
Excerpted from The Financial Times 6.8.2023
“If someone gets there first it should be us,” said Walter Sognnes, chief executive of Loke Marine Minerals, which plans to mine Norway’s metallic crusts and recently took on two UK-sponsored exploration contracts in the Pacific. “We are a big fishery nation, we live by the sea, the ocean is our biggest resource . . . We would not be reinventing the wheel.”
Norway. Into the Deep Seabed Mining?
Norway’s government is readying plans to open an area of ocean nearly the size of Germany to deep-sea mining as it seeks to become the first country to extract battery metals from its sea floor. The country’s energy ministry is racing to submit to parliament in the next two weeks a proposal to open the vast area to applications for exploration and extraction. The plan would then face a parliamentary vote in autumn.
But Oslo faces a battle with fishing businesses and environmentalists over the proposals, and risks opening a dispute with other nations as it pushes to enable mining close to Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic.
Norway argues it commands exclusive mining rights over a larger area of water there than Russia, the UK and the EU contend it does. Volcanic springs up to 4,000m deep that surge from the Earth’s crust on fault lines between tectonic plates in the proposed area contain an estimated 38mn tons of copper, more than is mined around the world each year.
Deep-Seabed Mining
Of the region earmarked for potential mining, the most contentious part would be the area close to Svalbard. The Svalbard Treaty, which gives Norway sovereignty over the islands, also gives other countries the right to mine on land and in the territorial waters around the archipelago. Russia, the EU and the UK are at odds with Norway over how large an area of water this treaty covers.
Amund Vik, state secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, told the Financial Times that deep-sea mining would help Europe meet the “desperate need for more minerals, rare earth materials to make the transition happen”.
The government would take a “precautionary approach” on environmental issues, he added.
The fluid that emerges from hydrothermal vents such as those in Norway’s waters also contains other metals used in electric car batteries, including cobalt.
Man Kit Lam is a vicious attack dog political operative who has no shame and will continue his slash and burn political vendetta against all those who oppose him.
Just today the San Francisco MSM is trumpeting the settlement of Man Kit Lam’s civil law suit against Jason Kruta. The young man who briefly disrupted his successful campaign to recall three Progressive School Board members in February 2022. An act for which Jason Kruta was fired from his job and was criminally prosecuted. A prosecution which was not enough for vengeful Man Kit Lam. He sued Mr. Kruta in San Francisco Civil Superior Court.A lawsuit which has just concluded.
“This lawsuit was never about money but uncovering the truth of whether there was a collaboration between Kruta and others to subvert the democratic process,” Lam said in a statement. “When I experienced and witnessed anti-democratic behavior and subsequently had my constitutional rights violated, I knew I must stand up for my rights and seek justice.”
He thanked Kruta for his public apology, acknowledging the case has led to harassment against him, and hopes the settlement will resolve any lingering controversy.
Man Kit Lam quoted in San Francisco Standard 6.26.2023
Man Kit Lam has parleyed his attack dog style of politics into a job with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He now serves as a legislative aide to Recall advocate Supervisor Joel Engardio. A political payoff for his work in ousting three Progressive Board of Education members and District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022
At the same time Man Kit Lam’s Fake News kumbaya comment hit the press. Man Kit Lam unleashed his Twitter account (@mankitlam4). He launched an incendiary libelous assault on people who were exercising their First Amendment rights. They opposed his efforts to recall elected School Board members and DA Chesa Boudin.
It is a most reprehensible person who can in one breath claim to want a dispute laid to rest. And in the next breath fan the flames. Abusing and terrorizing his foes.
Top photo: Man Kit Lam shouts down former San Francisco Supervisor Rev. Amos Brown at meeting of the San Francisco School Board in 2022.
Mayor London Breed with Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins during her swearing in Ceremony – Looking over Breed’s shoulder is Man Kit Lam, vicious opponent of DA Chesa Boudin 7.8.2022 
Lee's Perspective 